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I'm looking to reinstall Windows on my SSD but I really don't fancy reinstalling a ton of software. Is it possible to backup the entire registry of an old Windows installation to a .reg file and then restore it on the new one on the SSD and just copy over the Program Files, ProgramData, and AppData folders to avoid reinstalling everything?
Pyroglyph
Posted 2016-03-19T00:53:37.497
Reputation: 154
5
No this will not work
You would have to reinstall the softwares on a new OS
Also just overwriting registry from one OS installation to another will corrupt the destination so that defeats the purpose
SeanClt
Posted 2016-03-19T00:53:37.497
Reputation: 1 960
1
Windows simply wasn't designed with this sort of usage scenario in mind. I've been fighting such cases since about 1994, when I first started using Windows NT 3.51, and I don't think I've ever gotten any kind of naively-cloned Windows install to start up cleanly. It's why there is so much specialized Windows drive cloning software on the market. We we wouldn't need all of that if a simple disk duplication worked and the OS came with the tools you needed to do that.
The biggest thing you're going to be missing out on with your plan are permissions. Just like files on disk, every key in the registry has an ACL, but .reg files don't include security info. If you don't copy all the ACLs over, the best possible case is that you lose a bunch of security because you make all keys readable and writable by normal users. More likely, you'll end up with registry keys that the OS refuses to accept; there's an excellent chance that the OS will just blue-screen on first boot.
Then you have other details to deal with, like unique per-system and per-drive SIDs.
Bottom line, either use special cloning software or be prepared to do a lot of manual re-work.
Warren Young
Posted 2016-03-19T00:53:37.497
Reputation: 2 587
0
Actually you'll have more of a problem copying over the files than with copying the registry. The registry is just a few files on the disk that can be copied normally (e.g. %SystemRoot%\System32\Config\SYSTEM). The problem is that when you copy files in general, you can mess up features such as hardlinks, junctions, extended attributes, permissions, etc... the only way to get that right is to get an image of the drive and restore it.
user541686
Posted 2016-03-19T00:53:37.497
Reputation: 21 330
2No, its not possible for that to work. – Moab – 2016-03-19T00:57:21.877
4Why not simply image the whole drive and then push the image into the SSD? You can use software like Clonezilla to do exactly that and you don't have to worry about moving registry entry etc. You will get an exact copy/clone of the HDD on the SSD. – Darius – 2016-03-19T01:03:23.017
@Darius I would have done that but my HDD has about 550Gb of data on it and the SSD I'm migrating to is only around 250Gb. I'm currently moving over files and things to try and reduce the size of the image so I can clone it like you said. – Pyroglyph – 2016-03-19T01:07:29.057
To clarify, when I said 'moving over', I actually meant 'moving from my HDD to an external drive'. – Pyroglyph – 2016-03-19T01:08:17.953
You can use software like WinDirStat to find out which folder is the biggest culprit that eats up most space. If it is only data - then you are in good hand :) if it's your programs that eats up the space... You may need to start uninstalling stuff. – Darius – 2016-03-19T01:09:33.187
Note that large swaths of the registry are generated at boot (called Volatile hives), so this information can never be copied except by cloning RAM. Also note that Clonezilla restores must be made to identical or largely identical hardware, so the volatile hives will build themselves to be almost identical to the original. – Frank Thomas – 2016-03-19T01:24:46.277
2@Pyroglyph I use Acronis 2011 to make system images, you can add any folders/files you do not want included in the system image to the exclusions list, this makes it very easy to migrate to a smaller hard drive. – Moab – 2016-03-19T15:01:12.550